


Winter Soul-stice

by becklame



Series: Monster High Legacies [2]
Category: Monster High
Genre: Gen, there's some ocs but they're mostly just there as set dressing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 08:30:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13163160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/becklame/pseuds/becklame
Summary: Every year, the elementals of the monster world gather on the winter solstice. Some of them, namely one Heath Burns, are not well-suited for such formal festivities.





	Winter Soul-stice

**Author's Note:**

> Well, it's not really the winter solstice, and it's not really Christmas anymore either, but I think it's still close enough for me to post this and have it still be seasonal.
> 
> @ anyone who came here for the shipping: don't get too excited. It's kind of only hinted at, but AO3 doesn't really have a good tagging system for shipping content as a side note.

Heath Burns could think of a million different things he’d rather be doing than being forced to attend the formal Winter Soul-stice gathering with the rest of his family. 

More than half of those things involved setting something on fire.

At least two of those things involved setting the party on fire.

It could have been worse, he supposed. There were a couple people attending that he recognized; a few friends of the family. They were nice enough, but the party was still a little too stuffy for his liking.

The Winter Soul-stice party was held in a large ballroom with a marble floor meticulously polished to resemble a frozen pond. Larger than life ice sculptures of the most prolific elementals in the monster world surrounded the walls. All the ice brought a chill to Heath, but he was still somewhat impressed with the effort put into the atmosphere, even if it wasn’t quite his style.

Trying to enjoy himself as best as he could without making a fool of himself or his family, Heath walked over to a table carrying refreshments and poured himself a glass of blood-red punch. Just as he was a bout to take a sip of the brew, he heard a familiar voice.

“Is that really you, Heath?”

Heath turned around to see a tall tree nymph with dark makeup standing behind him.

“Oh, Thorna! Long time no see, but yeah, I’m still the same old Heath.” He snapped his fingers, producing a flame.

Thorna backed away slightly. “I’m surprised you haven’t gotten into trouble yet,” she mused. “This party’s not really your style.”

Heath gave a small laugh. “Me, get into trouble? Are you crazy?” 

Unbeknownst to him, the flame he had conjured began to grow in size. A few of the other party guests gasped, and a short water elemental pushed her way through the crowd, nearly knocking over Thorna, to douse the flame.

As the fire was extinguished, Heath felt a small splash of water against his face. 

“Hey!” he shouted. “What was that for?”

The water elemental simply glared at him judgmentally, eyes more than figuratively frosty due to the cold air, before walking away.

Thorna’s reaction was somewhat more sympathetic. “The event organizer, Miss Snow, doesn’t allow open flames,” she explained in a low voice. “I think it’s because of something her cousin did at last year’s gathering.”

“I didn’t know Miss Snow had a cousin,” Heath said.

“I don’t think she likes to talk about her.” Thorna pointed to the ice sculpture in the punch bowl. Heath hadn’t paid much attention to it at first, but it was formed in the likeness of a fire elemental woman with a surly expression on her face.

The figure only seemed to make Heath more uncomfortable, and he swallowed nervously. “Miss Snow doesn’t really like…people like me, does she?” he asked.

Thorna rolled her eyes. “You’ll probably be fine here if you don’t heat it up again. Why don’t you have some punch and enjoy yourself?”

Heath took a sip of the punch. He’d expected it to be fairly cold, but nowhere near as cold as it turned out to be. The beverage was exactly as cold as anything brewed by an ice elemental would have had to be. It wasn’t just “ice cold,” it was sub-zero cold. A cold that Heath Burns was not built to handle. Almost immediately after it touched his tongue, Heath collapsed on top of the refreshments table, tipping the punch bowl over himself and knocking over and shattering the sculpture of Miss Snow’s cousin.

Now even more eyes were on him. Among the crowd, Heath’s own parents looked at him in disapproval. The water elemental from before scowled and churned a few small waves around her. Even Thorna shook her head in disapproval.

“Heath, I know you can’t help but crash and burn,” she said. “But if I try to wreck a place I don’t want to be at, I still try to be more organized about it.”

Heath tried to sit up, shivering a bit from being doused in the icy punch. “At least you understand my tendencies,” he said weakly.

The other partygoers continued to judge Heath silently.

His mother spoke up. “Please excuse our son,” she said. She walked toward him and blew a blast of hot air, drying up the punch he had spilled. “It’s his first time being in the presence of more powerful monsters. He doesn’t know any better.”

“Gee, thanks Mom,” Heath muttered.

“I’m only trying to help you,” she whispered. “You’re lucky that Miss Snow didn’t see you. Now pick yourself up and try not to make a scene.”

Heath awkwardly shuffled to a corner of the ballroom that was relatively unoccupied. A sea nymph with an amused expression on her face was the only other person standing there.

“If you want my opinion,” she said in a Down Under accent, “-not that you probably do, but I might as well say it anyway- this is the most exciting that this party has been so far.”

Heath didn’t know what to make of this. 

“Err, thanks?”

“You’re absolutely welcome!” the nymph said, beaming even more. “You know, I thought parties were supposed to be fun. I can’t believe I skimped out on preparing for the Yule Tides for this.”

Heath managed a small smile. “Yeah, this isn’t really my idea of fun, either. I’m just here because my parents were invited.”

“Oh, my dad actually wasn’t invited. I just heard about this party and thought I’d show up.”

Heath was so surprised that he had to suppress a few sparks from flying out of his hair. “You showed up uninvited? Holy smokes, from what I hear about Miss Snow, she’d probably kill you if she found out!”

The nymph gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “Relax, I’m a goddess! I can do whatever I want! I’ve probably got more power in my fingernails than Miss Snow has in her whole body!”

Now Heath couldn’t stop his whole head from going up in flames, as improper as it was. “Am I dreaming, or did you just say you’re a goddess?” he asked, gaining a little more excitement over his predicament.

“Not to my knowledge, but you might want to pinch yourself to make sure! I’m Posea, daughter of Poseidon and goddess of all the wonderful creatures in the sea!”

Heath tried to pat out the fire on his head as his face blushed an intense crimson. “Well then, _goddess_ ,” he said eagerly, inching closer to her. “How’d you like to spend seven minutes in heaven?”

Posea immediately conjured a shower of water over Heath, and his flaming hair immediately fizzled out; to say nothing of the fire in his heart.

“If it looks like you don’t want me here either,” Heath said while spitting up a bit of water, “then I might as well leave. I mean, you came in here unnoticed- how hard can it be to get out?”

“Pretty difficult, I’d say,” Posea speculated while pushing Heath away. “Isn’t that Miss Snow over there?”

Heath turned in the direction Posea was now looking and spotted a tall and muscular female monster with ice blue skin and long white hair.

“I didn’t expect Miss Snow to be that pretty,” He remarked, though he regretted saying it almost immediately after.

“Well, she’s way out of your league,” Posea said in response. “I’m not too sure, but I think that Miss Snow just graduated from high school.”

Heath didn’t know whether to be disappointed in this statistic or relieved that he wouldn’t have to embarrass himself further by trying to woo the organizer of the party. What he did know was that he wanted to leave, and that Posea had said something about being more powerful than Miss Snow.

“Hey, Posea?” he asked. “Could you maybe try to talk her into letting me go?”

“Let me think,” Posea answered. “Should I announce my presence to her if I don’t want her to find out I snuck into her private party?”

And with that, Posea walked away, leaving Heath to be uncomfortable with the situation on his own.

He tried to scope out Thorna. She at least understood him a bit more than some other elementals, but she seemed to be engaged in conversation with a brightly glowing fairy- probably some kind of light elemental, or maybe just a friend of Miss Snow. He’d already made a big enough fool of himself that he wasn’t going to risk interrupting them.

He thought about finding his parents and just asking them, but that was silly. He wasn’t just a little ember- he was fourteen years old and in high school. No, if he couldn’t talk to Thorna, this was something he needed to take care of on his own.

Then out of the corner of his eye he noticed a door. Of course! He could have left the place all along! But he needed to find a way to do it without anyone noticing he was gone.  
…but if his parents didn’t notice he was gone until the end of the party, they’d be looking for him. He guessed he’d have to talk to them after all.

By the time he was able to re-group with his parents, the two of them were talking to a tall and sharply-dressed ice elemental, whose gaze seemed to land on Heath the moment he had inserted himself into the group.

“Hey Mom,” he said, trying to get his mother’s attention. “Thanks for helping me back there, anyway, there’s something I want to ask you-“

His mother turned to face him with a softer expression than before. “Oh, Heath! Excellent timing. I’ve been having a chat with Miss Snow and she says she completely forgives your little, um, _mishap._ ”

The Miss Snow that his mother had been talking to turned out to not be the same monster that he and Posea had spotted earlier. Heath began to feel hotter on the inside than what was considered normal for a monster of his type. He could have left all along, and now his chances were even slimmer than before.

The real Miss Snow continued to stare at Heath. Even though she had to only be five years older than him, her amount of authority made her seem even older to him.

“You’re not mad at me, are you?” he asked, his voice cracking even more than usual.

Miss Snow smiled in a way that hardly seemed to have any emotion.

“Of course not,” she said in an even tone. “It was a simple accident. I’m well aware that my punch can certainly, well, pack a punch.” She let out a laugh that sounded more like ice breaking. “And hey, I never liked that sculpture of my cousin Cindy anyway!”

Heath laughed along with her, albeit more nervously. “Great, so that’s all okay, now, I kinda don’t wanna be here, so…”

Miss Snow’s expression turned to one of disappointment. “You want to leave? Why should you? It’s not even midnight! Don’t you want to break some more sculptures of my least favorite relatives?”

Heath’s mother gave him a side-eye at the suggestion of leaving. “Heath, you’ve been invited to one of the most important events in the elemental world. You should show Miss Snow your appreciation.”

Well, that was a bust. Without more than a small “You’re right, I should,” Heath sulked back to the less-occupied area of the ballroom. Posea was now absent, but another vaguely-familiar monster had taken her place…

It was the other snow monster who Posea had mistaken for Miss Snow.

Maybe now Heath could get to know her. He approached her slowly, feeling as if every interaction he’d had throughout the night was a bomb he couldn’t stop from going off.

“Hey,” he said to her slowly. “…I’m the guy who crashed into the punch bowl. Sorry.”

As soon as he said the words “punch bowl,” the girl broke into a fanged grin.

“Ha! You were best part of night!” she spoke with a thick accent that Heath couldn’t totally place. “Is pleasure to meet you.”

Heath began to turn red again. “Really? I thought you were going to think I was some kind of fool. I mean, everybody else does…”

“Is that so bad? Fools are life of party! Make kings laugh! Party without fools is party without life.”

Heath had never thought about it that way. “Wow,” he finally managed to say. “Good point.”

“Must not waste words,” She continued to say. “Must make only good points.”

“Yeah…” standing next to the monster, Heath remembered when he said how pretty he thought she was, and he didn’t seem to regret it any more. “The name’s Heath Burns. Did I tell you that already?”

“Abbey,” she told him her name back. “You did not tell me.”

_Abbey._ It suited her much more than Miss Snow’s name.

Heath remembered Posea saying Miss Snow had graduated high school. There was something he needed to ask Abbey.

“Hey Abbey, how old are you?”

“Fifteen. Why you ask?”

“Nothing much, I’m fourteen, so I was just wondering…”

**Author's Note:**

> I like to imagine Heath and Thorna have something of a mutual understanding, since they're both at least somewhat inclined toward destruction and getting their way, sometimes with those two things crossing...
> 
> I know Heath's usually cocky and confident, but I wanted to explore a scenario where he was out of his comfort zone. I might like to think he might be hiding some anxieties underneath that exterior. Or maybe I just think tat because he sounds like his voice is cracking a lot of the time, who knows.
> 
> Also this wound up being a lot longer than I thought it was gonna be, lol


End file.
